The Rev. Louis P. Sheldon is chairman of the Traditional Values Coalition and one of the most recognizable names of the religious right.

Peter Laarman of Los Angeles is executive director of Progressive Christians Uniting and an ordained United Church of Christ minister. He is editor of the just-published Getting on Message: Challenging the Christian Right from the Heart of the Gospel (Beacon Press, 2006) and knows a lot of other groups active on this subject.

Greg Boyd is senior pastor of Woodland Hills Church in St. Paul, Minn., and author of The Myth of a Christian Nation: How the Quest for Political Power is Destroying the Church, in which he says American Christians should seek to build the kingdom of God instead of building political power.

Dan Wakefield is a veteran writer and Unitarian in Boston whose newest book is The Hijacking of Jesus: How the Religious Right Distorts Christianity and Promotes Prejudice and Hate (Nation Books, 2006). Read an excerpt in the April 24, 2006, issue of The Nation.

Read a March 2, 2009, article about conservative criticism of Obama’s faith-based initiative posted at U.S. News & World Report.

Among those who consider themselves part of the Tea Party, 51 percent reject evolution, according to a September 2011 survey by the Public Religion Research Institute. Sixty-one percent of independents and 64 percent of Democrats accept evolution, the survey found.

Robert Boston is senior policy analyst for Americans United for Separation of Church and State and assistant editor of its monthly magazine, Church & State.

Read influential evangelical Brian McLaren’s blog post addressing conservative Christians on the subject of health care.

Mark S. Hamm is a professor of criminology at Indiana State University in Terre Haute who specializes in terrorism, in particular right-wing extremism.